CABLE VAGARIES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 244, 9 July 1921, Page 7

CABLE VAGARIES

Sir,—Permit a far away and occasional reader to thank you for your leaders of July 1, criticising the bias shown by the cablets in reporting the Imperial Conference. Truly at this momentous time it is an amplitude of news we need, being quite able ourselves to supply whatever apotheosis of Mr. Hughes or criticism of Mr. Meighen seems thereby to be warranted. Is it too late to voice in your columns the passionate disappointment of thinking colonials that New Zealand gave no mandate for the Conference before the departure of Mr. Massey, without which he cannot claim the knowledge that. Mr. Meighen professes of the mind of his country? Two subjects dominate all else in British counsels at tho moment, or did dominate, for it seems on to-day’s cables as if ths Empire has taken the fateful turning as regards Japan, which future historians may even distinguish as the date when Greater Britain turned her back upon civilisation. Ar such a crisis a loyal Briton, on the face of generally accepted facts, can only write in the hope of being proved wrong by the sequence of events, and yet cannot endure that we continue in our prosent fools' paradise. Here, again, the cables have done their part in diffusing a certain vague assurance that a positive (and. of necessity, military) alliance with her one great rival besides ourselves can lie achieved without disturbing our relations with America. America herself has given no such assurance; the happiest augury wo can draw is that, Iwo days before the Japanese question camo to an issue at the Conference, the American Senate passed almost, with one voice the Borah amendment to the Navy Bill, authorising the President to invite Britain and Japan to discuss a five- years’ reduction of armaments. But there is little .-olid hope in Hint, especially to those who have read the views put forth some five months ago by Mr. Josephus Daniels on tho emptiness or positive mischief of temporary disarmament. Up to now. I think wo can claim that Britain held the trump cards for a greater decision than this, n. triple conference to which she, and not America, would have invit-

ad th® other two, for the discussion of permanent territorial delimitation, in which Japan’s legitimate desire for expansion should be satisfied. That discussion must come, but wo may no longer •be taking a prime part in it. Why did we not take that twentieth century initiative? Why, if we had, would America have listened uuresponsivoly? Let us come wholly out of our fools’ paradise and face the truth, Bummed up five months ago by the British publicist, Harold Spender in the ’’Contemporary Review” of March, after an intimate ' time of travel throughout America: I am constrained to testify that all this misunderstanding, whatever form it may take —whether in a refusal to compound the Allied war debts, or in a. determination to revise the Panama tolls —has one sole and single fount and origin. That is the Irish civil war. Mr. Spender’s arguments are too well backed by responsible testimony east and west of the Atlantic to need rehearsing; the context shows him, indeed, Iretter posted on the mind of America than on the mind of Ireland. Sir Philip Gibbs, it will bo remembered, interpreted Anglo-American differences from the came standpoint. Wo stand convicted. Our promises to Ireland in war time have not squared with our deeds in Ireland since the armistice. America takes Ireland ns her affair 'because something like one-sixth of her population are of Irish descent, and four of her greatest cities. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, are controlled by the Irish, while Washington is supremely bound to the cause by every tie of sentiment. If America hesitated, io become our ally in 1917, Sir Hamar Greenwood has no further endeared us to her or to civilisation in the interval. The first week of 1918 saw our first great opportunity of affirming Allied vows and solidifying a genuine League of Nations. We chose force, not suasion. The second great opportunity, and probably the last, arrived last week. Again we chose force, rather than the wise and just surrender which would have bound America to us for ever. The fate of Ireland is still ostensibly in the balance, but the sands of Imperial opportunity are almost run. —I am, etc., JESSIE MACKAY. Cashmere Hills, Christchurch, July 4.